Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 08:53:51 +0000
From: "Kimberly J. Laird" <LAIRDK@MEDSERV.ETSU-TN.EDU>
Subject: web index for science

    Someone asked whether it was really worth worrying about the
index for Science... In my opinion it is and that's based on
having to help a student locate citations for a paper he had to
write.

    Admittedly, it was his fault that he was in a hurry & didn't
have time to formulate an adequate search, but the point is that
the book chapter he was using to find relevant citations from
the bibliography had very badly mangled citations. If it hadn't
been for the indexes in the backs of the journals, we would not
have found what he needed, quickly. We could've searched
MEDLINE, but there's no guarantee that the titles of the
articles weren't equally badly mangled, as were the journal
titles & sources. (e.g Journal of Physiology instead of american
Journal of Physiology, wrong combinations of co-authors, etc.
etc.>

    Plus if you're trying to verify citations for someone, its
always best to use the actual piece, rather than relying on
databases to do the work for you. Using the journal's own index
to look things up is far better than browsing the table of
contents for each issue....

Kimberly J. Laird
Technical Services Librarian//Medical Library
Quillen College of Medicine//East Tennessee State University
<LAIRDK@MEDSERV.ETSU-Tn.Edu>